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Samuel Man (1647 – 1719)

“Rev. Samuel Man, son of William and Mary (Jarrad) Man, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 6, 1647. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1665, and began to teach school at Dedham, Massachusetts, May 13, 1667. He taught for five years, and preached to the small society in that part of Dedham, now Wrentham, until March 30, 1676, when the people fled from the town on account of Indian hostilities during King Philip’s War. He was again at Dedham as a teacher in 1676 and 1678. In the fall of 1677 the town to Dedham voted to invite him to become their minister for the winter, and early the following spring he was engaged to preach at Milton, but returned to Dedham, in the summer of 1680. Here he continued his ministerial labors until a church of ten members was gathered, and April 13, 1693, he was ordained and preached his own ordination sermon. On October 26, 1699, “In the dead of night” his dwelling house with the Church records was burned. It is said his mind was afflicted with infirmities, and for twenty-five years before his death he did not go out of his own town. One of the first men of the province writes of him: ‘He was not only a very good but a very learned man.’ He wrote a work containing advice to his children, who were soon to be married. ‘His ordinary sermons were fit for the press,’ and ‘yet such was his humility that he thought nothing of his worth publishing.’ He was beloved by his people. His last sermon was from the text, ‘I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit.’ He died at Wrentham, May 22, 1719. He married. May 19, 1673, Esther Ware, born September 28, 1655, died September 3, 1734. daughter of Robert and Margaret (Hunting) Ware. They were the parents of eleven children, among them Beriah…”

Source: American Biography: A New Cyclopedia, Vol. 4, by The American Historical Society, Inc., New York, 1918, page 258